Director Rupert Wyatt helped resurrect a franchise with the 2011 summer blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but he later shook up 20th Century Fox when he dropped out of the sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It took a couple years, but Wyatt finally chose a follow-up project, and it’s quite different from his action-filled surprise hit.

THR reported that Wyatt will team up with producer Chernin Entertainment to helm Marisha Pessl’s novel Night Film for the big screen. The book is the sophomore effort from Pessl, whose debut work Special Topics in Calamity Physics became a best-seller in 2007. Based on the description, the author’s new noir thriller – which is set to hit shelves this August – should present a seedy and suspenseful film-related narrative. See synopsis, courtesy of Amazon, below:

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive, cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.

For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world.

The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.

No writer is attached to adapt the project yet, but we’ll keep you posted on any updates.

Are you familiar with Marisha Pessl? Do you think Wyatt would do justice to her work?

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